Jones Admits to Doping and Enters Guilty Plea

WHITE PLAINS, Oct. 5 — On the day she admitted publicly to using performance-enhancing drugs, the former Olympic track champion Marion Jones wept Friday as she stood on the steps of the United States District Courthouse here and apologized for her mistakes.

Inside the courtroom, she did not waver when confessing in a strong voice to Judge Kenneth M. Karras that she had made false statements in two separate government investigations: the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative case and a check-fraud case based out of the United States attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York.

Jones repeatedly answered the judge’s questions by saying, “Yes, I understand,” as he explained the ramifications of her guilty plea. The prosecutors have recommended a sentence of no more than six months, according to the agreement. The maximum sentence is five years.

She will be sentenced in January. The International Olympic Committee has indicated it will not wait until then to move to strip her of the five medals she won — including three gold — at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, Australia. With her performance that summer, she became the first woman to win five medals in track and field at the same Olympics.

Jones, 31, was released after yielding her United States passport and promising to yield her passport from Belize, her mother’s native country. But in her emotional speech outside the courthouse, she made it clear that she believed she had lost far more.

“It is with a great amount of shame that I stand before you and tell you that I have betrayed your trust,” she said, referring to her fans and supporters. She added: “You have the right to be angry with me. I have let them down, I have let my country down and I have let myself down.”

She also announced she was retiring from track and field. Jones recently married the sprinter Obadele Thompson from Barbados and now goes by the name Jones-Thompson. She has two children, one with Thompson and the other from a relationship with the former sprinter Tim Montgomery.

Her guilty plea, as well as her admission in court that she used performance-enhancing drugs provided by her former coach Trevor Graham, were big developments in the government’s case against Graham for making false statements to federal agents. Graham’s trial is scheduled to begin in November.

Jones said in court that from September 2000 until July 2001, Graham gave her a substance he told her was flaxseed oil. But after she stopped training with him in 2001, she said she realized it had been a performance-enhancing drug. By the time she was interviewed in the Balco investigation in November 2003, Jones said, she knew it was the designer steroid THG, known as the clear. But she had denied recognizing the substance and denied taking it in that Balco interview.

“Both were lies,” Jones said.

She similarly admitted lying to federal officials investigating the bank-fraud case in two separate interviews in August and September 2006. At that time, she denied receiving a fraudulent $25,000 check that she had endorsed and denied knowing about the involvement of Montgomery.

Perhaps the biggest consequences of Jones’s sworn statements in court will be the damage they do to Graham, who has repeatedly denied providing his athletes with performance-enhancing drugs.

If Jones is called to testify at Graham’s trial, she can no longer invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination because she waived that with her guilty plea.

Photo

"You have the right to be angry with me," Marion Jones told supporters in an emotional speech on the steps of the courthouse.Credit
Mary Altaffer/Associated Press

“The federal government will vigorously prosecute individuals who provide false statements to its agents,” Scott N. Schools, the interim United States attorney in the Northern District of California, said in a written statement. “Individuals who lie to federal agents interfere with the government’s ability to investigate criminal conduct and undermine the efficiency of government investigations.”

The twist to Jones’s downfall is that it was triggered by her involvement in the bank-fraud scheme. E. Danya Perry, an assistant United States attorney, told the judge there was ample evidence, including Jones’s signature on the $25,000 check and the testimony of other defendants in the case, many of whom have already pleaded guilty.

Jones admitted to lying to investigators from the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the United States attorney’s office in interviews on Aug. 2 and Sept. 5, 2006.

The strength of the government’s evidence in that case was used to persuade Jones to plead guilty to the false statements to the Balco investigators.

Travis Tygart, the chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, said he applauded the cooperation between the government lawyers in the two cases.

“It’s bittersweet,” Tygart said. “Any time you watch a potential American hero admit to cheating us, sports fans, people that watch the Olympic Games, it’s bittersweet. Clean athletes, who do it right, who play by the rules and honorably, have a sense of vindication today.”

Last year, Jones fell under renewed drug-testing scrutiny when she tested positive for the blood-boosting drug EPO. The test was not pursued, however, when the B sample was negative for the drug and did not corroborate the A sample. After that, Jones defiantly denied ever having used drugs.

Tygart said Usada, which has had a case open against Jones for several years, would continue investigating and perhaps seek to take away Jones’s Olympic medals.

The Olympic sports community reacted with firm condemnation of Jones.

“Her admission is long overdue and underscores the shame and dishonor that are inherent with cheating,” the United States Olympic Committee chairman, Peter Ueberroth, said in a statement. “As further recognition of her complicity in this matter, Ms. Jones should immediately step forward and return the Olympic medals she won while competing in violation of the rules.”

The more immediate issue, though, was Jones’s role in the continuation of the Balco case, which had seen few developments in recent months.

The case has resulted in the guilty pleas of six others: Balco’s founder and president, Victor Conte Jr.; James Valente, the former vice president of Balco; Greg Anderson, Barry Bonds’s former trainer; Remi Korchemny, a track coach; Patrick Arnold, a chemist; and Troy Ellerman, a defense lawyer.

The cyclist Tammy Thomas, who also denied using steroids, was charged last year with three counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. No trial date has been set.

Bonds, baseball’s career home run leader, remains under investigation on the suspicion that he lied to a federal grand jury about his use of steroids. Anderson is in jail for contempt of court for refusing to testify about Bonds.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page D1 of the New York edition with the headline: Jones Admits to Doping And Enters Guilty Plea. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe